discussion article disciplinary boundaries for creativity文章讨论创造力的学科界限.pdfVIP

Creative Education 2011. Vol. 2, No. 1, 47-55 Copyright © 2011 SciRes. DOI:10.4236/ce.2011.21007 Discussion Article: Disciplinary Boundaries for Creativity Stuart Rowlands Centre for Teaching Mathematics, University of Plymouth, Plymouth, UK Email: stuart.rowlands@plymouth.ac.uk th th rd Received October 25 , 2010; revised February 9 , 2011; accepted February 23 , 2011. Creativity is a very topical issue and indeed a political one. For example, the very notion of ‘little c creativity’ seems to be a reflection of the requirements of what could be described as a ‘Post-Fordist’ economy. However, the call to develop creativity in education is largely based on the idea of creativity as the production of novel ideas. The central argument of this article is that creativity cannot be seen purely in terms of novel ideas but that it is intrinsically bound with the teaching of the academic disciplines. It is within the context of creativity in the sense of transforming the disciplines that two paradoxes are discussed. The first paradox is that the truly creative act is not the preserve of the genius but the potential for the whole of humanity. Secondly, creativity involves both thinking within the constraints of the discipline and challenging those constraints. This implies the need for students to engage in meta-discourse, inv